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Orange Badge Culture At Microsoft
coolball writes "For those of us that have worked as a contractor (a-dash or orange badge or whatever), Seattle PI's 'Microsoft's 'orange badge' culture gets forum' article caught my eye this morning. He talks about OrangeBadges.com and Contractor's International Network, two forums that have sprung up as a meeting place (cyber & meat) for current/past/future contractors of the empire. If you have been a Microsoftee, then you would laugh out loud in recognition some of the tales he relates."
About as exciting as a splash graphic design contest for some unknown POS image editing program.
Wu claiming that he doesn't want to try to unionize contractors to Microsoft rings hollow. If he's building a site that encourages community, couldn't any other member in the community just as easily make a big push to unionize as he could? I suspect that if enough buzz was drawn around the idea, it wouldn't necessarily matter what the founder thought, unless said founder quashed notions of the idea, an action I find unlikely.
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
How desperate for news must the slashdot editors be to have posted this article? It can't possible interest more than 1% of even Slashdot's IT-concentrated demographic. I freely admit to visiting Slashdot a tad compulsively, but that's in the expectation of a distillation of quality news articles - something that's been slipping for a long time.
Seriously though, just by trawling through the RSS-feed for BBC news, I can see several stories that are far more deserving of Slashdot's attention. (See the technologry section for a good selection). So, my rhetorical question for today is: why is this here?
The contractors at Microsoft seem to be the biggest whiners I have seen in the IT industry. *Whine* they dont treat us the same, the put a hyphen in our email address so everyone knows we are contractors *Whine*.
Guess what? No one cares. Some people don't have jobs, period - especially cushy IT jobs at a stable mega-corporation.
two forums that have sprung up as a meeting place (cyber & meat) for current/past/future contractors of the empire. (emphasis mine)
;)
Ummm?! Sounds like you get a whole lot more when you are a contractor for Microsoft
Microsoft's two biggest contractors are Volt and Kelly Services
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Thats what some of the full time blue badges at one point liked to call any of the vendors/contractors (they get e-mail addresses that start with a "x-" before the username and the different letters stood for differnt contracting & temp agencies. A friend of mine used to work there (went from Orange to Blue badge) said that there were a number of full timers who completely looked down on the contactors. They would ignore thier e-mails, not co-operate with them and brush it off since the temps were just "dash trash". If this is still happens and full time employees still get away with it, they could use a support forum or two...
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
We don't need no stinking orange badges!
You've got to give them a bit of credit. Here these guys are making money from the great evil one, working in the belly of the beast. At least they didn't end up changing badge colors.
Having been a contractor in IT working for some of the "big ones" the last 10 years, it is a lot different wearing the OTHER color badge. Things like:
1. No free meals on "employee appreciation day".
2. No access to the company park/gym/pool/volleyball pits.
3. Parking 2 miles from the building entrance.
On the good side:
1. Real easy to leave and go to the next gig.
2. Money.
3. More autonomy. I am my own boss when my wife's not around.
"It might be psychological, but it does make a difference," he said. "You walk into a meeting and everybody knows immediately that you're orange. It changes things a little bit -- however slightly, but it does."
People recognizing your orange badge instantly makes you an 'outsider' or 'not really and employee' at Microsoft. It is in people's nature to want to belong to a group, and once they see that you are not part of their group, you are not deemed as trustworthy or good enough to be part of their select group.
If I ran Microsoft, I would make a lot of changes but first I would not make badges with an opposing colour scheme. Everyone should have the same badge, eliminating the psychological effect of being an 'outsider' or 'not really part of the same team.' One less thing to worry about and one less possibility for employees to become divisive and uncooperative.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I knew a guy who worked for a company as a contractor. He was billing $60 an hour, and they were giving him about 50 hours of work a week. They gave him a nice office. The guy turned around and sued the company to be recognized as an employee because he wanted the benifits. I forget the details, but his argument boiled down to "they treated me like an employee, so I am an employee, now give me my benifits or severance pay".
I'm the kind of guy who likes working on projects, then moving on to something different. What is wrong with contracts? I have been very happy working on a project for 5 or 6 months, then taking two or three weeks off before starting the next project. I have more vacation time than my friends who are employees.
I learned my ABC's watching television! I learned science watching Voltron.
FWIW - US Govt Employees are some times referred to as "Blue Badge" while contractors are "Yellow Badge".
Actually, 250 is an overstatement:
There are currently 137 members registered on Orange Badges: Contracting at Microsoft.
And from the below (I am too lazy to format what I cut and pasted- just look for the numbers) check out how many posts there have been!!!
Forum Name Topics Replies Last Activity Orange badge alumnis Moderator: howard This is the place for you if you were a contractor at Microsoft before and not with Microsoft anymore. 8 23 12/30 at 1:36 am Orange badge makers Moderator: howard This is the place for information regarding the various contracting agencies that provides contractors to Microsoft. 2 17 12/30 at 10:00 am Orange badge wanna-bes Moderator: howard This is the place for you if you are looking to become a contractor at Microsoft. 6 8 12/29 at 6:13 pm Orange badges unite Moderator: howard This is the place for you if you are currently a contractor at Microsoft. 11 67 12/30 at 3:23 am Orange-turn-blue badges Moderator: howard This is the place for you if you were a contractor at Microsoft before but now a fulltime Microsoft employee. 1 4 12/30 at 1:06 am Posting of Jobs Moderator: howard This is the place for posting and searching job openings 1 0 12/29 at 9:13 pm Suggestions, Comments, and Complaints Moderator: howard This is the place for making suggestions, leaving comments, and issue complaints about OrangeBadges.com 2 0 12/30 at 12:30 am
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Or maybe he's interested in only making anion.
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
You're right. The only time it stinks is when the employees revolt because they find out you are being paid 150% more than them, you do have health insurance, and you get 10 weeks of vacation each year. A smart company would keep contractors covert. Imagine if you couldn't tell who was an employee or not? Wouldn't you bust your hump a bit more so that you would appear to be a contractor if you weren't really one?
very small sites?
The Borg looked down on autonomous humans, too. Technically, it's known as denial.
Maybe there isn't so much benefit for the potential union members, now that I think about it, but for Microsoft? Resistance makes them futile; they'll find some other temps to assimilate.
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
If this is the case, then they are not relying on more than one method of verification and that is not very secure.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Anyone with an orange badge should be forced to wear it for life !
Badges orange you!
Yellow is for temp/contract.
Blue is for vendors/agents of another company.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Im contracting for a financial services firm and I see the same childish behavior everywhere I go. They put contractors out in hallways with a desk, pc and chair. The employees used to laugh. Then, suddenly, an employee was sitting out in a hallway one day and the contractors were laughing. All the while, no one realizes that companies create an environment of uncertainty and stress by putting workers against each other. Contractors are not the only mechanism used this way. Forced ranking systems are another example. This atmosphere creates workers that are on edge all the time, overworked and worried.
http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/
No one really cares - of course since most of the contractors have been let go over the years it's quite rare to see a yellow badge. Usually it's someone involved in a VP's pet project or someone maintaining code that no one else can.
I recall in one of their security training videos contractors were even mocked. Some "evil" data-mining company was doing things such as stealing laptops, eavesdropping on conversations, and pretending to be members of the target company. When the tasks for the day were given out, and dumpster diving came up, someone said something along the lines of, "Well, give that to one of the contractors. Heh heh heh." Funnier yet, when the "contractor" showed up in the video, he looked more like Joe Dirt, covered with tattoos and a mullet. He was dropped off way, waaaay up the street from the target CEO's house and the truck with the other contractor went and parked next to the trash cans. So about 20 seconds of the video shows this guy walking up the street in broad daylight, sticking out like a sore thumb, only to come to where the truck was parked, dumped the trash bins into the truck and left. It was horribly ridiculous and MST3K-worthy.
--Chag
In Soviet Russia badges orange you!
No, you are thinking of Ukraine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
10 weeks a year? Try more like 20. Contracts who know how valuable they are can easily charge well over $150-$200 per hour and accomplish in a day what some IT employees take a week to do.
Health insurance isn't too expensive if you realize you need it for EMERGENCIES, not for yearly check ups and all that. Drop the co-pay, pay for your doctor's visits, and use insurance only for the big things. When I put my deductible to US$5000 annually, my insurance rate dropped big time. I put a little over US$5000 in gold to pay my deductible in an emergency, and I believe I pay just over US$100 for my health insurance (31/M/ex-smoker/kidney stones). I have great coverage, but I pay my doctor cash -- and get a discount for it from his office.
Doens't Google have the same setup: a team of enmployees and a team of disposable contractors?
Are the contractors treated better at one place or the other?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Borg references aside, would you sooner rehire someone who was openly dissatisfied with the perceived stigma inside your work environment against contractors? Or would you take a chance on someone you don't know to have sounded off in such a way?
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
roflollmao!!!1111one!!1one one two three check! check! Damn, you beat me to it. Mod this shit up you steeeeenkeeeen mahdurrrrrs!
Why orange ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_wheel
orange is the opposite of blue, just like red and green.
Is this intentional ?
When I was there they were called "Dash Trash", because their e-mails had a "t-" or "c-" at the front. I was Dash Trash due to the fact that I was an intern, but I was also a "Blue Badge".
It's the same everywhere. Contractors are second class citizens in terms of culture. Whether you are working at Microsoft, IBM, Ford, VW, GM, EDS or where-ever. However, if you are a smart contractor, you will do a good job, learn as much as you can, and moving for more money. The contractors I pity are the H1-B guys and gals since they are totally stuck.
Contracting can be fun. I highly recommend it to all recent grads. Get out there and see the world, get good at what you do, and change jobs every 4-6 months for more money! Eventually, someone will realize your talent and pay a premium to keep you. The big secret is that the contractors do ALL the work while the full-time employees go to endless meetings and lunch.
"A friend of mine used to work there (went from Orange to Blue badge) said that there were a number of full timers who completely looked down on the contactors. They would ignore thier e-mails, not co-operate with them and brush it off since the temps were just "dash trash". If this is still happens and full time employees still get away with it, they could use a support forum or two..."
Nice attitudes...
Maybe the full timers were afraid that a contractor would take their job?
100% Insightful
Arguably, you're right--even if parent was meant as a troll. Only 31 posts on OrangeBadges.com with 121 replies. Not exactly a thriving environment. Sorta surprising that this was considered interesting enough for someone to write an article.
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
I started out at M$ as a contractor. (End user support for MSAccess in Irving, TX back in '95) I was an employee within six months. (Then an ex amployee six months after that.) When I switched over, the difference was like night and day.
:)
While I was a contractor there was a site wide carnival where they trucked in mini roller coasters and other fun stuff. Contractors were literally ushered out the door and weren't even told about it beforehand.
One day when I was a full time employee all of the contractors...ALL 700 on site...were fired because of low call volume.
The class action lawsuit brought in later years by former contractors didn't surprise me one bit after that.
...by the way, I can type on this keyboard with just my penis and two tablets of Viagra^W^W^W^Wkite string tied to my finger! ...damn that shift key really hurts my left nut while deleting typos...
I'm pretty sure this article is more about "temps" and is just using the word contractor as a PC term.
And for temps it's a whole different world, of course.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Yes, that is a pretty common term.
Right-minded moderators are saying fuck this shit, these guys are right. I know I'm going to lose my moderation privilleges for ever, probably, but I don't care 'cos these posts tell the TRUTH.
As of now the parent has a score of +2. Expect it to be bitch-slapped back to oblivion asap however... Not by the moderation community, I hasten to add...
There is nothing that puts more fear in a Megacorp like employee awareness. Especially when they know if they treat someone unfairly, everyone is going to know about it. I've seen temps treated pretty unfairly at times, almost as if they agreed in writing to be treated like a doormat when they signed the contract. Good job Wu.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Let's not forget self-employment tax. That will kill you come tax season. You have to pay the portion of social security that your employer would have paid if you were actually employed at the company. It is killer.
My other computer is a Jacquard loom.
I have encountered no unreasonable prejudices or bigotry connected to my "yellow-badge" status here at IBM Rochester. I am, in fact, quite overjoyed to have found such a magnificent work environment.
Personal experience only, ymmv.
Unionize? No way. Not Microsoft employees. They're paid well, and treated even better. Any attempt to unionize would be, I'm sure, met with "You're fired", and they'd be replaced in 10 minutes. It's not like there's a lack of people willing to work at Microsoft, contract or otherwise.
I don't respond to AC's.
What about when you need an X-Ray, MRI, and a few month's worth of name-brand prescription meds?
You pay 15.x% up to a certain amount, which employees actually already pay. Your employer pays you less so he can pay the matching 7.7% or whatever it is. As a contractor, you already figure this tax into your billable rate. 20 hours a week at $150 per hour, minus the self-employment tax is still hefty dollars.
I have contracted for years in Silicon Valley (since the bust) and am always treated well by the companies I work for: Invited to office parties, holiday bonuses and the topper of them all: quarterly profit sharing. All of this despite the fact that I am typically only at each client for 15-25 hours/week. Granted, these are smaller companies (under 500 employees), but nevertheless. I suppose you weigh your choices and go from there.
After reading through their board, they all sound like a bunch of whiny babies crying that they don't make enough money. Hey bitches, they don't pay you enough? Go find someone who will!
While a full time technical employee at IBM (Essex J*, ** - shhhhh!) in the nineties, we envied the contractors. At least they were treated like human beings. They were paid more. They had more free time. They had the option to convert over to regular where we would have to leave the site for a year before we could accept a job with a contractor. Job security, I got laid off after 15 years and offered a line job with a pay cut. "Brain the size of a planet and all they wanted me to do was open doors" - Marvin
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
I will accept that some contractors are highly skilled problem solving ninjas, well worth the premium they're paid.
The stories that I'm always fed are about contractors who are paid 180-300% what the regular coders get, eat steak every day from their ridiculous per diem and travel compensations, jerk off for a few weeks at the office, then its up to the regular staffers to fix their shoddy code for a month afterwards. And for whatever reason, some companies get stuck in these loops for a long time. A friend of mine built databases for a big big big tech firm (huge chip/IC mfr), and that was his story about twice a month. What was even richer was when he was laid off along with most of his dept while the company increased its reliance on the shoddy contractor work (he found a better position in a couple weeks since he was experienced and talented). Of course, this is more a story about poor management than any real statement about contracting.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
http://malfeasance.50megs.com/
Your freedom to do that costs a couple thousand other people the ability to get a mortgage, get many health care expenses covered, and often costs them the ability to get work for three months at a time. Nobody wants to hire an MS contractor on break, because they know they'll lose you in 100 days.
You know Pete, some people just don't like to talk about their flair...
I'd use my insurance for some of that, yes. I already had an MRI that I paid for out of pocket (cash, up front, received a 50% discount). I had an X-ray of a wrist I thought I broke a year or two ago and went to an independent clinic where I received an even bigger cash up-front discount.
Cash is king. It can save you 30-60% over your bill, as the medical office doesn't need to deal with the hassle of getting paid by the insurer.
Alright boys and gals, I'm here so, please, bring on the onslaught. I'm the grinning dude in the PI article, Howard that started OrangeBadges.com. DON'T ALL THROW FECES AT ME ALL AT ONCE!!!
But seriously, I'm not sure if you all realize how huge an organization Microsoft is, and how much of its workforce is made up of temp employees. Just in Redmond, WA, there are 30,000+ head counts, and between 1/3 to 1/4 of that is made up of contractors. If you also take into account of the perma-temps of the 80s and 90s, plus, due to the "work-365-days-and-take-100-days-off-with-no-guara ntees-your-position-won't-be-fille-by-another-cont ractor" perma-temp settlement, there is a huge swarm of people flowing through the orange-badge system every year. That's easily 10,000+ people who are/have worked as an orange badge at MS. If you also take into consideration all the people who WANT to, plus all the international MS orange badges, you will realize that this is a huge community of people.
Now, I know we are all supposed to hate Microsoft. Trust me, now that I am in the bastion of open-source @ Amazon.com, there is no lack of distrust of commercial licensed software, but I'm talking about real people here. So, cut me some slack, boys and girls. It's just a message board. :-)
OK, now you can all throw feces my way, and I will answer the best I can. :-)
OrangeBadges.com BEAN
Except in a Jerry Springer kind of way.
I knew a guy who worked for a company as a contractor. He was billing $60 an hour, and they were giving him about 50 hours of work a week. They gave him a nice office. The guy turned around and sued the company to be recognized as an employee because he wanted the benifits.
If this is the same guy, then he worked contract for 2 or 3 years, was offered a blue badge and refused it, and sued over stock options, not benefits. This was a class action suit that cost MS a pretty penny and resulted in the 100 day rule.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
But there was this very large governmental organisation somewhere in Europe once upon a time that put colored badges on people it wanted to treat as inferior. What happened to it? I think it went out of business in the big dot-bomb of '45.
Pining for the fjords
That happened to me. Once. Shortly thereafter, I had a chat with my manager, who had a chat with his manager's manager. His unwillingness to work with contractors was on his review the next cycle, and he "spent more time with his family".
Not usually. Contractors are generally employed by a contracting company (like Kelly) that take care of all of that. I was a W-2 (regular employee) contractor for more than 8 years. I even got health insurance from my contracting companies.
I don't respond to AC's.
I was an orange badge at Microsoft in 1999, when the contractor lawsuits were going on. Other blue badges automatically assumed I was a money-grubbing orange badge, out to get what was rightfully theirs. People would stop talking when I entered a room. What irked me the most was that we had a group outing to Stevens Pass to go skiing. I paid my own way on the trip, and rode up with some of the guys on my team. On the way back, they decided they didn't want to drive all the way into Redmond, so I had to catch the bus back with the other blue badges. People literally did not want to allow me on the bus because I was an orange badge. I wanted to join and/or participate in a group called GLEAM (Gay and Lesbian Employees at Microsoft), yet they were actively exclusionary too.
What made all this so irritating for me was that I looked at my job at Microsoft as a crowning achievement in my career when I started there - I had every intention of doing my time and converting to blue. I knew I wasn't entitled to stock options or other benefits since I was an orange badge, but people didn't seem to recognize that I knew that.
Quite honestly, I still hold a grudge against Microsoft because of this. I work for a large software company now, where contractors that I've worked with are treated with the same respect as the full timers. Yeah, they don't get some of the benefits the rest of us do, but I've never seen anyone hold that over their heads. Just about every contractor I've worked with here has been converted to a full timer, also.
I work as a contractor for another big company in the industry. Same badges issues - I wear an orange badge, the permanent employees wear blue badges. It's kind of a mixed blessing for me. One one side, the side, I'm missing out of some of the benefits, and I'm excluded from some of the meetings. On the other hand, I'm paid really well, and I don't have to go to some of the meetings...
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
In 1998 Microsoft hired me right out of college and green as all hell to edit and write Encarta reference products. I stuck with it for a year and a half, crafting masterpieces such as "Iceberg", "Independent Counsel Act", and a few million other articles that began with the letter "i".
I remember whining with all of the rest of the dash trash about my so-cruel and unequal fate.
With the benefit of hindsight I realize that that Microsoft treated us more than fairly. The company arranged parties and outings for us that were pretty fun. Our supervisors treated us with great respect. We ate with the blue badges. The coffee and drinks were free. We got overtime where warranted. We were allowed to work autonomously, maybe too autonomously.
I think many orange badges people are upset because they're unwilling to face a more uncomfortable truth. Dash trash are not unequally treated so much as being employees of unequal pay and status. These inequalities are a function of temp employees' inferior experience and skill. Looking back at my own experience, I wasn't ready for Microsoft in 1998, and there's no way in hell I would have been hired full time given MSFT's other potential hires.
But as a temp I was offered an opportunity to get a glimpse inside the cathedral and to gain a lot of worthwhile experience. Being able to say I "worked at Microsoft", even as a contractor, has proven to be enormously valuable in my career. I've used that aura to create a developer/design/architecture position for myself that is more satisfying and far more lucrative than I would have managed continuing with pure editorial stuff for the 'soft.
Brothers and Sisters of the High Order of Dash Trash, I feel your pain. But take responsibility for your learning, your self-improvement, and your career. If Microsoft isn't pulling you on full-time, it isn't because the most successful corporation in the history of the world is lacking for payroll. There's something that's missing in you, and maybe you need a bit of work yourself before you're ready for the big leagues. There's lots of opportunity out there, and maybe just maybe you should forgo the sucky commute across 520 for something else.
Having worked in the software R&D arm of a large company that everyone reading this will know, and where contractors were treated well and respected, does it perhaps not say a great deal more about employees' attitudes and the corporate culture present in these firms where people are acting like, well, pricks?
For the love of God, if you are working in a firm which practices such open segregation of (for want of a better word) permanent and contract workers, it is the fault of your sorry ass alone if you allow such practices to continue. Man, if management in my previous place had even thought about branding people as outsiders in this manner, they would have found themselves without a workforce.
"When they came for the contractors,
I remained silent;
I was not a contractor".
It's you next, pension-healthcare-insurance-boy.
Software engineers of the world, untie!
taka
I've worked for a company called Unisys as a contractor before, and lost my job due to "low call volume." They treated us contractors differently by making us stick out like a sore thumb. The display name in our e-mail addresses would look something like this: "Last name, First name non-Unisys", and our badges would be white colored, while employee badges were silver colored. It took longer for contractors to gain security access to job-related applications and networks than it did for employees. Obviously, we were much more disposable as well. We did our jobs just as efficiently, or IMO more efficiently than employees. However, contractors were always looked down on by employees. Despite all of this, I still like being a contractor. I get the opportunity to experience different areas and types of IT jobs. I gain more over-all knowledge of the industry simply because I see more of it. The advantage we contractors get is a better sense of exploration and adventure. We don't have to be stuck in a 9-5 grind job that doesn't change. We gain valuable experience with each new contract, instead of falling in the groove of doing the same repeated task over and over each day. Plus, the pay can be better.
How strange, our contractors wear orange badges, too. Is there an RFC for badge color out on the intarweb someplace?
. . . in DOD TS/SCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information) facility.
When I arrived at a new assignment in the former West Germany in the 1980s at a USAF TS/SCI facility, I waited six weeks for my SCI access to be verified.
In those days, a red badge was issued to anyone who's SCI access had not been verified. While in the facility, you had to be escorted everywhere and before you entered a room your escort had to announce "RED BADGE" to alert everyone to stop the secret-squirrel stuff.
And when I say "escorted everywhere," I mean everywhere, including the restroom. Red badges were encouraged to make number two BEFORE they entered the facility, or wait until they left.
What?
I called mine box monkeys because for the most part the only thing they were good for was reinstalling the OS after I'd destroyed something while doing a penetration or virus test. I hated my contractors because they were worse than useless, half-trained, and pushed on me by management that didn't have headcount budget to hire trained, full-time employees but wanted to throw manpower at problems.
sorry for your bad experience.. i think it depends on the personalities of the contractor and the other people on the team.
I don't know anything specifically about why GLEAM wouldn't allow you to join, but in general, non-blues are excluded from all kinds of things due to nobody understanding the legal issues involved and nobody being a real advocate of contractor "rights" [these are not really "rights" issues but thats the word that seems to describe the feeling best in my mind] enough to try and understand / resolve them.
Even though contractors sign NDAs and all that, we get advice from legal all the time that certain topics are not open to discussion when non-FTEs are present. Many internal mailing-lists at MS are FTE only.. sometimes because there is a real business need and others because the FTEs dont want to have to worry about what they say.
So did your experience on the bus cause you to look away from MS?
Also, im not sure how it works at other places, but at MS there is NO implication that a contractor will ever become a full timer. I've interviewed candidates for both types of positions - the duration, intensity, and nature of the interviews are completely different. We're looking for different things, depending on which type of position we're hiring for. Yes, many contractors do end up getting FTE positions, but its by no means an expected or even a desired thing from a company perspective.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
When I put my deductible to US$5000 annually, my insurance rate dropped big time. I put a little over US$5000 in gold to pay my deductible in an emergency
Why gold? You don't have too much of a guarantee that it's increasing -- and the prices over the last two years haven't been even close to monotonic. If you're keeping it for an emergency, the value could have been anywhere from $80 to $130 per ounce, if you needed it sometime this year or last year. If you keep $5000 in bills, it'll inflate or deflate at the same rate as your deductible...right? Or am I missing something?
Anheuser-Busch envied the MS contractor model so much that they implemented MS policies, right down to badge colors, contractor term limits and different user-id's mapped to email addresses.
Working there as an "orange badge" is the equivalent to being charitably bussed to an expensive private school from a poor neighborhood. You are an untouchable, not to be socialized with and become the scapegoat for poor management. You don't attend department meetings that directly effect your project and workload, you aren't allowed to attend office parties (even those happening right outside your cube - just getting some cheese from the party tray is firable) and you are reminded daily by ego driven managers that you are disposable trash that has no value to the company. Morale sucked.
I was "disposed of" when a manager was being investigated for sexual harassment reported by a co-worker who was a blue-badger. HR scheduled an interview with me on the matter and days before the interview I was sacked. They provided no reason for my seperation, simply that I was "no longer needed." Nevermind that I was the lead on a major rollout that was nowhere near completion.
I've read several short-sighted responses of "these stupid whiners should be thankful they have a job" and "these orange badgers make crap-tonnes of money." Thanks to a glut of techs on the market when I signed on, I wasn't well compensated and I ended up unemployed for the first time in my life. Due to "orange badge" policies, I was unable to get a reference from AB or anyone who worked there. Oh yeah, I was thankful... thankful my ass!
I worked several contract jobs prior to AB with nothing bad to say about the previous companies or contract work in general. Companies who foster the "orange badge culture", such as Microsoft and Anheuser-Busch, really need to find a better way to integrate contractors into their workforce.
Actually, it's the unskilled "book smart" recent grads that make contractors look bad. They have very little skills involving how companies truly work as opposed to what they have recently learned in school. They are the main reason there is such a negative view of contractors.
We only hire contractors that have real world apllicable skills which typically means we hire someone well into their 20s or 30s.
* Si hoc legere scis numium eruditionis habes *
That's a good theory if you're healthy, but if you've got a chronic maintenance-requiring condition unfortunately there's litle way to let slip the yoke of traditional corporate employment and the group health coverage it implies. (For example, having an organ transplant and requiring obscenely expensive immunosuppressant prescriptions to stay on this mortal coil, quarterly rather than annual exams, etc. Sure, I could be a consultant [my skillset is not a limiting factor], but I'd be paying $thousands out of pocket every month just for health care rather than $hundreds, and that's a hell of an overhead tiger to be riding, seems like...)
If you will kindly leave your expletives behind and learn some history, you will find that yellow badges were introduced at an early stage in the persecutions, when being Jewish affected your employment prospects or status rather than threatened your life. The point I was trying to make was that official discrimination, however unintentioned, leads to more serious discrimination. Anybody who has studied management, or education, knows the importance of not marking out a group as inferior. It's easy enough to do with just a little thought. A company the size of MS should be looking at ways to maximise the contribution of its employment dollars - and that means avoiding having groups perceived as being lower status.
Pining for the fjords
I always get a kick about how people bitch about paying co-pays and uncovered expenses. Most people pay $2.00 for a bottle of water, $4.00 for a cup of coffee, or $8 for a $1.50 subway sandwich... but they complain about paying $30/month for a lifesaving drug!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
"but they complain about paying $30/month for a lifesaving drug!"
Uh you don't know what your talking about. Its not "geez why do I have to pay this $30 a month!"
Its "the drugs that will help you cost $350 a month and are not covered by your plan. You can either pay for the drugs or eat. Decide." You know all those people complaining about how much drugs costs these days? Well they're sure as heck not complaining about a mere $30 a month copay.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
shoot him? why? I say drug him, tie him down, and paint his entire body with every color from the rainbow. That way, when he wakes up, he'll think he just got tortured by Leprachauns for stealing their rainbow gold!
I think everyone assumes larger corporations like MSFT have a more rigid organizational structure. This is not news.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Aren't you a little short for a Blue Badge?
Even within the DoD and Intelligence agencies, there's variation. The one I'm most familiar with uses blue for gov't and yellow for contractor, for the same clearance level.
Erm, you're good at logical fallacies, so good you -committed- one when trying to show the existence of an entirely different one.
A varient of the Straw Man Referred to as the Extreme Man on this site.
XAU is actually an index of precious metal mining companies, which have many complications beyond the price of gold: environmental regulations, co-mined metal prices, mining labor costs, availability of other inputs (like big industrial tires). Looking at just gold prices, they have gone up for the past 4 years, chart here. Gold is a very conservative investment, it's goal is not so much to provide returns but hedge against major risks (hyperinflation, financial panic, governmental failure, etc). In modern times the US Dollar has adopted that role for many people, but it has shown some cracks as it aged, so the more pessimistic among us have shifted to gold. In any case, he's probably staying ahead of medical costs (and doing better than highly liquid bond investments).
If you were to keep bills they would provide no protection against a deductible increase or decrease. Beginning today let's presume a medical procedure requires 10 man hours of time for exam, lab, and billing and the doctor's average cost is $100/hr in 2005. Using an extreme example of inflating costs to $200/hr in the near future, 50 $100 bills would only cover half the "value" of the deductible, but 10 oz of gold would have increased in value perhaps to something near 100 $100 bills in the future.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Companies do need to control access to information. But doing it based on arbitrary blanket rules like "don't discuss Topic X when a contractor is in the room" is just plain stupid.
That said, it seems obvious that "Security Clearance" is exactly what Microsoft has in mind. Contractors often have distinctive badges (my own has an employee number that begins with "T" for "Temporary", and lists the name of my job shop) but something as conspicuous as a special brightly-colored badge is way beyond that. This is the sort of useless security measure somebody mandates just to prove that they're doing their job. Which is consistent with MS's track record of security -- strong on appearances, weak on substance.
In America, the only really important color you need to remember is Green. The rest are just trimming.
I was a contractor for Intel, and because of that, I had a "Green badge" where the people that had checks with Intel's address on it were "Blue-badge employees"
One of the differences that was clear on your first day, was that greenbadges had to swipe their badge every time they enter or exit the building. Bluebadges just showed it to the security guy from across the room and walked in or out.
We developed a saying: "Green badges always swipe when they are done"
There was a contractor once that used some of the 3M blue masking tape you find everywhere around Intel to turn his green stripe into a blue stripe, just to see if anyone noticed. It was two weeks later that a manager asked him "Hey - when did you get hired as a blue badge employee?"
She wasn't happy when he peeled the tape off.
Now I work at a company that has Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow badges for completely different purposes.
Red = access to secure areas such as "the vault" in the Jewelry division, the datacenter, wiring closets, etc.
Blue = employee non-secure access
Green = contractor
Yellow = temporary
However, no one really even knows what the difference in the colors mean except the security clucks.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Only after reading this article did I see what color badge my team mates were wearing. It is true that contractors might get less benefits than regular employees, but fortunately, at my company we don't distinguish that much between permanent employees and contractors. But then again, I guess it is all in your manners and culture.
Our new president (troll) is not the most loved one to say the least.
:
= 80
He made his "fame" by saying "Fuck off BUM" to some people at the day of Warsaw presidency election.
And so the "Fuck off BUM" orange badges were born
http://www.spieprzajdziadu.com/index.php/?page_id
I know they are different kind of orange badges, but still funny.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Dead on. People buy insurance and then expect coverage for every little tiny thing.
I recently lost my wife's wedding and engagement rings, and I was, of course, crucified for this rather significant error in judgement. But we didn't spend a ton of money on the set - probably $2,500 for both - and that's Canadian dollars to boot.
My in-laws think we should go through our house insurance, which i think is ludicrous. I have a $1,500 deductible, so the very best I can hope for is to squeeze $1,000 out of them, which I will, of course, have to pay for myself anyway in the years to come in the form of rate increases.
Insurance is for protection from *catastrophic probems* like your house burning down, writing off a car wreck or covering $250,000 in medical bills for some obscure ailment which strikes unexpectedly.
Ratcheted up your deductible, and your rates go down significantly. Put the deducible in a bank account and use it to cover the little "emergencies" that life dishes out periodically. You'll be far better off.
Years ago, an amusing anecdote circulated regarding ...
a Sun software contractor at a party, crowing about
how he had it much better than the fulltime employees
(As is typical, the conversation mentioned the better peak rate
of pay which more than covered perceived lack of benefits like
health/insurance, stock options, ESOP, doughnuts, etc.)
Then his buzz got a little more specific about how he
could use the same codebase for another project at Sun
competitor SGI, getting paid twice for the virtually the same thing.
Because some inebriation transpired at the event, the loudness
level increased just at the point about how Sun was a sucker
for such trickery, when the presence of CEO Scott McNealy at the party
was noted by others (the contactor was oblivious to who #1 was).
It didn't take long for Sun to supposedly deplete the ranks of
most software contractors, a practice that may still be in effect --
naturally now matter of little import during times of H1B visas,
overseas engineering centers, and underwater stock options!
"I hated my contractors.." so you failed to lead them , train them or convey what skill-sets you really needed to your manager. That seems to be a good definition of useless.
Just leave your badge on the car dashboard a lot on the weekends and it fades to yellow. Then you are longer an "orangee".
Table-ized A.I.
Free drugs, well im lying down
Body painting on drugs sounds like fun =>
Shame i have to wake up =|
Never know i might be shot in my sleep !
Most contractors FUCKING SUCK compared to FTEs (Full Time Employee in MSFT lingo). Those that don't suck are worked on to become FTEs, and usually get an offer they can't refuse. Trubly blessed are those that a) don't suck, b) have no desire to become FTEs. They work 9 to 5, make good money, and get properly compensated for overtime (MSFT FTE's dream).
;0)
So Excel, Volt, etc are pretty much glorified recruitment agencies and they wisely choose to not enforce their non-competes against MSFT.
I was a contractor a Intel for about 13 months when I all of a sudden got sick. I took out long term disability on myself as I do renter insurance. I may never use it but it nice to have and man am I glad I took that out. Intel cancel my contract once I got sick. I was about to go from green to blue.
After 2 1/2 years of sickness I had to make a claim against my long term disability. I have a chronic illness that requires round the clock med's, etc. I can collect until I am 65. It was the best $68 ever spent for a coverage of $1500 a month.
The big secret is that the contractors do ALL the work while the full-time employees go to endless meetings and lunch.
Get off Slashdot and get back to work!
I got a two-hour lunch, then meeting, then going home early...
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
That post on one of the public forums that talks about, "Had a buddy who was organge badge. Went blue. Worked 50% more hours and didn't get paid for them," rings true for me. Only I haven't quit and gone back to the dashies yet.
12 of the past 26 weeks, I have worked 60-90 hour weeks.
This really isn't management's ideal situation, and they're trying to address this by hiring more staff, but it's not as easy as it sounds. The challenge is the same in our group as in many places outside Microsoft. It's not that there aren't people applying. It's that finding people able and willing to do the work, when the pay budget is above entry level but really not quite at the level to attract the right candidates, it isn't easy. There seem to be two issues at play: 1. many higher in the ranks still think the panache of a blue badge and the benefits accompanying it should more than compensate for less gross pay than orange badge once OT is factored in (great benefits help make up for it, but don't quite hit 50% of the difference), 2. those setting hiring budgets don't understand what experienced staff with the right skills really cost because they've hired a number of entry level staff at lower rates. I've contributed to the latter problem of misperception by going blue at a bargain rate. I fell into the project as a dashie and got so jazzed by it that I was willing to let my income take the hit. More than a handful of people are still willing to take a cut to have that blue badge, but only a fraction as many as in the past, and the compensation model is taking some time to adjust to this. It looks like contractor pay is leading improvements in FTE compensation, as management sees what they're having to pay for contractors now that the economy has gotten better. Three years ago, dashies could be had at bargain rates, and FTE salary and stability at the empire even without the promise of options windfalls looked great to many in comparison. In this way, the bad economy temporarily masked compensation issues that should have come to light with the devaluation of our options. Now dashies are in shorter supply and management is seeing how much staff with certain skills actually cost in today's more competitive market. One of the reasons for this is that in the past few years, many (up to 50%?) blue badgers' salaries have increased only 0-3% per year, whereas many contract position salaries have increased at twice that rate or more.
For example, I've been called by a couple contract firms, hiring dashies for the team I'm on, at a 20% higher hourly rate than I currently earn. PLUS offering OT when more than 40 hours a week are worked, designing your own tradeoff between steady employment and income: at same hourly rate for v- without the mandatory 100 day break, or at time and a half for a- if you're willing to take the mandatory 100 day break.
If I didn't love my position as much as I do (I wouldn't be in quite the same role as a dashie), I'd be talking to them. That paid OT really does start to look compelling after a while, because blue badgers no longer have stock options securing our future.
So if anyone out there is considering contracting at MSFT, now appears to be as good a time as any in recent memory to do so.
The idea of a contractor is that you can hire someone for a very specific task and when they are finished, they go. If you're builing a house, works out great, if you're building software, not so much. The job often never really finishes, and contractors end up being hired for years on end. Good for the contractor, bad for the company; contractors are more expensive, and the differentiation between perm/cont can upset team dynamics.
The really strange thing is that in larger companies there's a budget overhead associated with regular employees (for an office, phone service, etc..), but the same overhead is often not factored into a contractors cost. If you're a department head, it can seem 'cheaper' to hire a contractor.
Don't get me wrong, contracting is good, and I contracted for a while, but they are a tool that is often used unwisely.
-Ben
I've contracted off and on for over 20 years, 10 at Microsoft. I've heard horror stories about "dash trash" abuse, seen worthless contractors sit on their ass and play games all day, and watched contractors do the heavy lifting as group politics swirled 'round.
Most of my contract gigs have been pleasant, although the last few years we contractors have been increasingly hearded into "bull pens". The worst was a former server closet (actually larger than a closet, but just as inviting) where the AC vent blew reliably down my neck, shoulders, and back. Needless to say I wrangled a RAS (remote access) account and worked at home after that.
Microsoft chews through contractors at a ferocious rate. Unless you are very thick skinned and can work hard independently, don't take a contract at Microsoft. You are not an employee, so don't whine about missing the morale events, free crap, etc. You also get to avoid the semi-annual "what a good boy I've been" review process, where most get a pittance.
On the up side you get to avoid many mind-numbing powerpoint presentations, the lemmings at the annual meeting, etc.
Yes. He was arguing that he was a Common Law Employee, that is, he didn't control when and where he worked, which tools he used to perform his work, etc.
For a clearer description of this, please read the Internal Revenue Service publication Independent Contractors vs. Employees
As a v- (there are v- and a-) I hear contractors use the term when speaking of themselves. As for treatment, in the data center enviornment "dash trash" get just as much respect.
then wal mart.......what next Seriously, this whole fucking thiing about contractors and the shit with not being able to unionise pisses me off.
the contractors we had in the USAF. They had no real authority or permanent place, so everyone just laughs them off. Example:
One night I'm working on the tail of a C-17 with a contractor. He's up in a cherrypicker about 4 stories up trying to remove a stuck screw. It was kicking his butt and he was up there for at least 20 minutes. It was about 10 degrees that night, he was older and I knew he wanted to come down, so I asked if he needed any help. That guy yelled at me at the top of his lungs as if he were an officer, saying he neither needed nor wanted help from a lowly staff sarg such as myself, to paraphrase. I walked away laughing. I was just trying to be polite.
In short, contractors have a chip on their shoulders because of how most people treat them, and they carry it around and display it even when it doesn't matter. Just do your job, orangey.
Why would you trust a testimonial when choosing hosting?
I have access to the same break room with the fridge full of drinks, tea, coffee, etc. as blue badges do. I park in the same lot, I walk in the same door, I eat at the same cafes.
Some have commented that oranges aren't involved in team meetings, but to me that is a blessing. Less management overhead = more time to get my work done, less stress about dealing with politics and beaurocracy. And the beaurocracy here is huge. I process security-related tickets, and the process is very complicated. About 90% of my brain-time is spent dealing with the system and the remaining 10% on the actual technical aspects of my job.
It's not the most engaging or exciting work I've ever done, but the hours are great, the benefits from my company good, and it pays well. That's all good for the home life, so I can take my daughter to daycare every morning and pick her up at night, and we can have dinner every evening as a family (at a reasonable hour).
But if you told me that this would be my job for the next 10, or even five or three years, I'd start looking for a better gig immediately--I don't think I could put up with the repetition and monotony of the tasks for that long.
I respect Howard's desire to participate in more of a community as an orange badge, but it isn't compelling to me. Unlike past jobs, this is just that, a job. My goal isn't to join the ranks of the blues, and to be honest, after getting a glimpse of the internal politics and beaurocracy here, I don't know that I'd accept a full-time position.
"Machines don't fix themselves."
His unwillingness to work with contractors was on his review the next cycle, and he "spent more time with his family".
Is that a euphemism, like "sleeps with the fishes"?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
"Contractors" are usually hired with the expectation that they are qualified for the job.
Of course, a lot of these problems stem from HR departments. I'm a contractor from AOL, and here the HR department is worse than useless. They actually prevent qualified candidates from being hired. When a friend of mine finally got on board someone saw his resume and pointed out how perfect he was for the job, but HR never recignized this from his resume. I dealt with them on numerous occasions and every time it was like I'd never talked to them before, and when I did interview, no one contacted me back or even returned my calls. I finally got in because of the friend above... they had to end run around HR in order to get me in otherwise it would have never happened. From everything I've seen, if it were up to HR here, qualified people would never get in the door.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The missing piece is a HSA (Health Savings Account). Anyone have one?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)
"Most people pay $2.00 for a bottle of water, $4.00 for a cup of coffee, or $8 for a $1.50 subway sandwich... but they complain about paying $30/month for a lifesaving drug!"
Who are these "most people" and were can I meet them?*
*Free hint: Wal-mart is one of the biggest discount retail chains for a reason. Maybe because "few people" are shopping there.
A contractor may bill $60, but the contracting company gets as much as 65% of that. His/her gross take-home can be as low as $25, specially since health insurance is often up to the contractor. I feel that contractor = $$$ is a myth.
"While in the facility, you had to be escorted everywhere and before you entered a room your escort had to announce "RED BADGE" to alert everyone to stop the secret-squirrel stuff."
Did they yell that before you entered the restroom?
I have never heard any of my coworkers refer to a contractor in a demeaning way because they were a contractor. We once had a contractor techwriter that a few choice comments were made about, but it wasn't because she was a contractor -- it was because she sucked at her job.
It is someone difficult to make friends with them, as the duration in the position is limited to about 9 months, and they aren't allowed to attend company functions (due to the permatemp lawsuit)...
He wasn't working for a contracting company. If he were, it would have been clear that he wasn't an employee of Microsoft.
I recently joined Microsoft as a blue badge employee. I had a conversation with someone I've known for ages who is a relatively recent orange badge hire. I can't say what things used to be like, but I haven't seen antipathy towards contractors, nor heard the complaints like the article mentions. The only issue along these lines I've seen is with confidential information. Since contractors aren't really Microsoft employees, they need to have their own NDAs, and by default can't be told information that's Microsoft confidential from other companies.
Also, there's a lot of transition between the groups. Lots of blue badges used to have orange badges. And I know some folks who have gone from blue to orange if they wanted to work remotely or something.
My video compression blog
"remember how Ballmer used to give us shit because we didn't eat the bones of the babies we devoured?"
"that was so awesome when allard couldn't get it up to assfuck a nun, so he used his foot instead!"
I'm laughing at Microsoft and everyone who thinks this is funny, all at once. That's how post-post-modern I am.
Okay, a little OT, but here's a question for the group - temp employees don't seem to get to go to outings, company parties, etc. and this seems to upset some people.
Is there anyone out there who actually likes office parties / outings / 'mandatory fun' events / 'team building' dreck? I work for a bank, and I cringe every time I hear the words 'office party' and thank my good karma that I have had 'legit' excuses to skip the last few events.
Has anyone out there ever actually 'networked' effectively at one of those things? I went to everything for years based on the idea that it might help my career. Nada - and I'm not a total dork (or so my wife tells me...)
Volt is definately one of the biggest, if not the biggest, but they don't pay time an a half for overtime.
Down in LC, Compucon pays time and a half. It doesn't even matter if you are making $40 an hour, they'll still pay you time and a half for overtime.
Also, last I checked, Compucon's health insurance was more affordable.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
It certainly is a common euphemism where I work. It usually happens when people leave suddenly with no warning and nothing lined up for what they are doing next. You may draw your own conclusions.
My UID is the product of 2 primes.
Orange Bagde meeting:
...and so on, until they've completed the 12 steps.
Mark: Hello, everybody. We have a new member today.
John: *cough* I'm John, and I'm a MS Orange Badge.
Crowd: Hi John.
John: I... I've been an Orange Badge for two years. Ever since my father died, I... *cries*
Mark: It's alright, John.
John: I knew it was completely wrong, I just... they said they needed people who know distributed databases... *sobs*
Mark: The important thing is that you've sought help.
Loss is not covered under homeowners policies anyway. I know of no homeowners policy that offers open peril coverage for unscheduled personal property. You may wish to consider getting a personal articles floater policy for the new ring you get her. At 2500$ you would not pay very much at all a year, and it does have open perils and no deductible. Additionally, at least in the company I work in, we don't raise your rates if you have claims on your homeowners policy. Eventually we will stop insuring you, though.
I work for a hardware reseller that sells and services PCs for Microsoft developers. We perform onsite service frequently all over campus, so myself and a couple of other people in my company have orange badges for that purpose. These badges don't look any different than the ones the on-campus temps wear and my badge doesn't mean a god damn thing to me. So I guess that makes matters worse since there really is no way to tell the difference in the halls between a contracter who wants to fit in to MS culture and be recognized as an equal and someone who is just there to drop off some RAM. Personally I don't like temp jobs and I am really turned off by the fact that MS won't commit year-round to a contracter. I feel I am a skilled technician and I want to work for a company that can offer me a real job (read:stability) because I am proud of what I do. Temping is a choice, so remember before you start bellyaching about discrimination and 100 day hiatus that you have a choice to contract or not. Instead of trying to form a temp union, get a real job and tell Volt to fuck themselves.
When I read the parent post, I just assumed they were referring to what I call "money" and didn't assume that they had actually purchased and stored several ounces of a precious metal.
That's just me though...
Only 31 posts on OrangeBadges.com with 121 replies.
That's embarrassing...on this thread alone, there are over 240 posts and over 40 with a score of at least 3. You know your website isn't succeeding when an article about it attracts more traffic.
I was a contractor for 2 years from '92 to '94 (badges were green then though) and I was a "blue badge" from '94 to '00. Yeah contractors are treated different. They filed a class action lawsuit because they were treated "the same as regular employees, except for the benefits". They won, and got paid. I got my check a couple months ago ;) Microsoft was told by it's lawyers to make sure that contractors were NOT treated as regular employees as a result of that lawsuit. You can't have it both ways.
If you don't like the way you are treated, don't be a contractor at Microsoft.
So I went to the site. And I looked over the various topics. And I decided on the following:
/.ers know this). And "pergorative"! Yes indeed, now there is one fine word! I bet that "transition" used as a verb simply trips from their tongues and keyboards.
"Current Topics for Orange badge alumnis"
And chose the thread:
"pergorative treatment of the orange order"
All this just for S&G.
Are all the ex-oranges who post simply illiterate? Do they not know that the plural of "alumni" is; well, there ain't no plural: "alumni" is the plural of "alumnus" (I'm certain that all
I had forgotten just what torture it is dealing with this younger generation! (I was one of those elderly gentlemen (with acid tongue) who fixed all that fine COBOL code during the Y2K madness. One of those elderly gentlemen who learned to speak English.)
The sort of work you're talking about (5 or 6 months of working on a project before moving on to another company, maybe some time off) is the "right" way to use contractors. However, not everyone operates that way. There's plenty of folks who are in open ended contracts, making no more after taxes than a regular employee, but without advantage of the ability to establish duration-based seniority, or other niceities such as employer provided health-care. They'll be in these positions for 3, 5, 10 years, at the same company.
The company really is treating them like an employee, but without the legal obligations that are attached to holding an employee. There are companies out there that have more long term open-ended contractors than they have regular employees. It's practically predatory hiring practice, and in honesty, it should not be legal.
I can speak from experience when I say that there are areas where IT skills are only marketable in one or two companies within a reasonable commute distance, and those companies tend to also have a difficult time finding sufficient IT staff. This means that if truly faced with the option of either hiring their contracting IT staffers, or letting them go and replacing them with other IT staffers, they'd have to hire them, or they'd do without sufficient staff. At the same time, without unionizing or a law to make this practice illegal, no individual has the leverage to demand that they be treated fairly as an employee when they've been working for the same company at effectively reduced benefits for 7 or 8 years, because there's not enough tech jobs in the area to risk getting fired.
The management in these companies tends to be unsympathetic since most real employees have "done their time" as a contractor first. These long-term open-ended contractors typically jump at the chance for real employment since it means the same financial compensation, but with the real benefits that being an employee comes with (health care, company-matching retirement plans, etc).
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
When I worked at Sun, they gave us contractors vertical badges and the employees had horizontal badges. If you think the orange was bad, wait until you get pissed on for the mere fact that your badge was skinny and long instead of wide and fat (man, that's phallic).
Bottom line: contractors get the shaft at almost every big company. It's a fact of life. If you don't like it, try to get a job somewhere as a full timer.
Health insurance isn't too expensive if you realize you need it for EMERGENCIES, not for yearly check ups and all that. Drop the co-pay, pay for your doctor's visits, and use insurance only for the big things. When I put my deductible to US$5000 annually, my insurance rate dropped big time. I put a little over US$5000 in gold to pay my deductible in an emergency, and I believe I pay just over US$100 for my health insurance (31/M/ex-smoker/kidney stones). I have great coverage, but I pay my doctor cash -- and get a discount for it from his office.
That's fine unless you have a family member with a chronic illness. Even for common, non-AIDS, chronic illnesses, you can easily spend $10K/year on doctor's visits and prescription meds.
I worked in the Silicon Valley Campus for MSN, as an orange badge. When billg or ballmer was in the building, orange badges were not allowed anywhere near them. Unfortunately, the room they would use for their all-hands (all blue badge hands that is) meetings when the big guys were in town happened to also be our cafeteria, which would be locked down with heavy duty fire doors. Half of our department would get up and leave, which would double the amount of work the orange badges had to do for the duration of the meetings. Orange badges are not allowed to work for more than 12 months -1 day, without a 100 day break in between contracts. This was to encourage managers to not re-hire contractors, in case they start getting some expectations. I envied the cooks in the cafe, as they were considered "vendors", and had open ended positions, where as us orange badgers' time was always ticking away.